Korea's chief test administrator resigns over difficulty level of CSAT's English section

Korea’s chief test administrator resigned on Wednesday after universities and educators criticized the English section on this year’s national college entrance exam for being more difficult than recent years.

The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) said its director, Oh Seung-geol, stepped down after taking responsibility for the English section of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) for the 2026 academic year, which produced the lowest share of top scores since the exam adopted absolute grading in 2018.

“Director Oh takes heavy responsibility for not aligning the English section with the intent of absolute grading, which caused concern for students and parents and created confusion in the admissions process," KICE said in a statement.

The test-making body said it would review the full question-setting process and prepare changes to ensure more stable exam development.

Only 3.11 percent of test-takers earned the highest grade in English in the Nov. 13 exam. The figure fell below the top-grade share in subjects assessed by relative grading, where the top 4 percent of students receive the highest mark, drawing criticism that KICE failed to manage difficulty levels.

The Ministry of Education said it will carry out a detailed investigation this month into how the CSAT questions were developed and reviewed, and will respond based on its findings.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

BY KIM JI-HYE [[email protected]]